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Chris Matthews: "Don't you think the Dow would stop dropping if we had a President who would stop signing Pork Bills?"

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 15:39
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2% of the bill is earmarks.

Submitted by RisingTide on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 16:04.

next question?

top earmarker is Cochran of Mississippi. As usual.

espressly not relevant.

Submitted by RisingTide on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 16:32.

great quote though:

I second Angry Saver's point; there are serious structural imbalances that will continue to unwind. Denninger's point (not unique to himself) is that these institutions all rely on an asset bubble that's been building since the early 1980s. So the Great Unwinding continues. --Basel Too

wait a minute. in this

Submitted by molotov on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 16:52.

wait a minute. in this current economy, isn't pork stimulus anyway?

Eliminating hog odor in Iowa doesn't create nearly enough jobs

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 16:58.

Hopefully that answers the stimulus question.  There are approximately 7,999 other projects similar to that one, although not all are quite as interesting to contemplate.  People see this as a really, really bad time to roll out any spending that's not specifically targeted to restoring economic security - in addition, Obama violates his own campaign promise to boot.  Last night 2 Democrats (Bayh and Feingold) refused to vote for it.  We'll see if that number increases tonight. 

The mere fact that Matthews is pivoting and losing that tingle up his leg, as are other members of the previously loyal media, is a story in and of itself.

Did all GOP senators vote

Submitted by acinphx on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:11.

Did all GOP senators vote against it?  Being lazy about the research but would be interested to find out if you know.

40% of Earmarks Submitted by Fiscal Porkers in the GOP

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:50.

So no, not so much.  It's a huge embarrassment for Republicans, and one which they'd best not repeat if they want to get re-elected, I would say.  This hypocrisy has really got to stop. 

But even with the mea culpa, Obama still has the responsibility and made the commitment to use his veto pen for earmarks from both sides of the aisle.  Ball's in his court (but trust me, that doesn't get R's off the hook with their voters).

Thanks, lagomorph

Submitted by acinphx on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 19:31.

On another thread I commented that this seemed a lost opportunity for the GOP to regain some fiscal responsibility cred.  If instead of taking to the floor to caterwaul about Obama breaking his promise, had McCain been able to instead to say that the Senate GOP was prepared to eliminate every GOP earmark and called on the Dems to do the same, it seems it would have really demonstrated the party was seriously committed to cut spending.  And put the spotlight on the Dems, including Obama, in a very unflattering way.  Would that even have been possible, for the Senate to remove some or all of the earmarks?

I know it's only 2% but in this economy we should be looking at every dollar.  You have to start somewhere and if earmarks are as wasteful as claimed, why not take the baby steps?  If no one has the stomach for cutting 2% of spending advertised as wasteful for years, I don't have much hope for entitlement reform (for either party).

You are right - that would have been genius.

Submitted by NextRightNando on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 19:38.

Instead, 9 Republicans voted against his amendment.

Genius indeed

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 21:15.

My gosh, we are all in agreement!  Holy cow, what's next - actual bipartisanship?   :-D

We have probably hit bottom.

Submitted by artigiano on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:06.

I'm no economist. But my simple calculations indicate that where we are now is pretty damn close to where we ought to be. I came up with a formula that indicates the Dow ought to fall at 5740-6900 for August of 2008 and 6200-7500 for August of 2009. So today's close of 6600 or so would be just about in the midway sweet spot. It might fall a couple of hundred points more before starting to recover. But I doubt we are headed very much lower.

I just took the low point in August of 1982 of DJIA 776. That's when Reagan's economic policies started the bear run that lasted until the crash of 1987. So I figured that 776 was the last honest number posted. After that, it was all artificially pumped up well beyond actual value with government policies of huge deficits, deregulation, and crazy accounting tricks that lasted until it all crashed in September of 2008.

Now the market is just getting back to the honest value it would have if we had managed our country honestly and prudently for the last quarter century. The historic DJIA gain is about 9% annually. But I figure that rate is a bit too rosy a prediction because all the dishonest inflated numbers from the recent past are included in the calculation.

But the DJIA goes back to 1896, so reducing the annual growth assumption down to 8% seems a bit too pessimistic. I calculated both growth curves using each percentage, starting at 776 in 1982 through today, and figure the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two projection numbers.

In case your interested, if the President's plans put us back on track to pre-1980s style economics, we will see Dow 10,000 between 2013 and 2016. But don't look for 14,000 again until 2016-2020. 

Conjure says, "The S&P can easily blow through 600 now."

Submitted by RisingTide on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:20.

please don't use the dow! using the dow is for dumbasses,a nd you ain't that dumb. price weighted index is BAD!

http://dshort.com/charts/bears/four-bears-large.gif

note the black swan Black Monday doesn't appear here at all.

mp further writes:

Submitted by RisingTide on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:33.
   
Like this comment? [yes] [no] (Score: 0 by 0)

"There is no panic, just a MULT well under 1, and the greatest deleveraging and capital destruction in history."  Conjure says, "YEEEEEEEEE-HAAAAA!"  "Ride 'em into the ground."

 

okay, Conjure is starting to scare me...

It's cute in a kawaii sort of way, when lagomorph and others think that Obama can somehow stop this. Times up, chuckles.

 

If you mean

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 17:56.

by "stop this" that Obama has a White House full of Sharpies, that his left hand isn't in a cast and that he has a Line Item Veto, then I do think Yes He Can.  And so does Chris Matthews, which is far more incredible to me.  I actually like Chris for the first time since he tried to make a pass at a leather jacket-clad Katrine Vanden Heuvel back in the olden days of Hardball.

Apparently we're all fiscal conservatives now.

No line item veto.

Submitted by artigiano on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 19:05.

Obama can't strike out any or all of the earmarks, because he doesn't have a line item veto. He could veto the entire appropriations bill, in which case all government functions would continue as usual with an automatic across the board 8% increase over 2007 figures. It's unlikely that the appropriations bill would be reintroduced.

And he never promised to veto any bill with earmarks. He promised to go over any bill line by line looking for waste that he would recommend that Congress eliminate prior to passage. Once it gets to his desk it is too late and quite pointless to go over it "line by line." I'm sure he will fufil this promise on any bills negotiated during his presidency. Whether Congress goes along with his recommendations is up to them. Unfortunately, this bill was crafted in the last Congress before he took office, so there can be no recommendations.

Also, to get some perspective, earmarks represent less than 2% of the spending in this bill, and that is about average for most appropriation bills. One would have to assume that their are a great many very worthy project among the earmarks. I would guess that less than half could ever be called "waste" by prudent individuals on either side of the aisle. So eliminating wasteful earmarks does not mean eliminating all of them or even most of them. Adding a 10 million dollar burn unit wing to my local children's hospital is pretty hard to argue against. And even what seems like "waste" can be vitally important if you know why it was included.

A Senator might be the single hold out vote on a very important matter like war funding, health care reform, etc. but he horse traded his vote on future legislation in exchange for some earmarks that are vitally important to no one but him and his group of constituants. The projects could be so laughable on its face, that the only way he could even get it out of committee was to trade his future vote to get it slammed through. In fact the sillier the project sounds the more likely the sponsor has to offer something to get the other committee members to go along.

He is doing his job for the people back home if that Buggywhip Museum is something the community really wants. And the Buggywhip Museum might sound stupid to you and me. But to the Congressional leaders who were in the private negotiations, it represents the linchpin for passage of other sweeping legislation important to all of us, that othewise would fail.

Thank you for the correction

Submitted by lagomorph on Thu, 03/05/2009 - 21:13.

I jumped the gun on the line item veto being implemented, it's currently being firmly pushed by McCain and Feingold. 

I appreciate your explanation of the Buggywhip Museum rationale, however that's the old way of doing business in an economy that was solvent.  Thus, the outrage many of us feel about applying it to today's insolvent economy. 

how much are you willing to cut the rural poor off?

Submitted by RisingTide on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 10:14.

or even the suburban rich? both pay far far less than they cost in terms of taxes.

Personally, I wouldn't mind some sort of gradient tax, which incentivizes people living in working communities. When "nearly fail" logisitics does actually fail, well, when your only store in town is walmart, there's going to be problems.

I think we're actually on the same page here, I'm just trying to explore where on the page you are ;-)

Ever since Tim Geithner lost the war with TurboTax

Submitted by lagomorph on Fri, 03/06/2009 - 19:42.

(I give him a slight benefit of the doubt only because I'm in a good mood tonight), you'd think we'd have a perfect opening for a broad national debate about how we can implement real tax reform.  So if that's your point, I'm in total agreement. 

If you're suggesting that we implement a sort of "Bangalore Software Development Park" approach to people being able to own a lower cost home in a rural area but work in a dedicated "working community", honestly I wouldn't be surprised to see that idea floated at some point by both the private and public sectors.  Consultants have been living this type of lifestyle all along (fly home on weekends, on road all week), so I'm not averse to it unless I'm forced to share a room with some woman who snores, watches reality TV all night, and forgets to put her irritating cell phone on mute.  Hmmm.....perhaps that would even provide an opportunity to bail out the coming Commercial Real Estate FAIL Whale. 

Let me know if I misread, and you actually meant something completely different.